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depth/independence

Hi,

Could anybody help me with the underlined sentence? I am not quite sure what it means?

Concerns about objectivity's objectivity are no justification for thinking that the SAT is on a par with a random teacher's assessment of a random student's achievement level; depth does not in general offset independence, and quoting examples where it does is irrelevant to the general claim.

Re: depth/independence

Originally Posted by Mei227

Hi,

Could anybody help me with the underlined sentence? I am not quite sure what it means?

Concerns about objectivity's objectivity are no justification for thinking that the SAT is on a par with a random teacher's assessment of a random student's achievement level; depth does not in general offset independence, and quoting examples where it does is irrelevant to the general claim.

Mei

My take on this sentence is:

1. This is part of a discussion about evaluating students by independent standardized testing versus evaluating students by having teachers who know the students give them grades.

2. The speaker seems to be responding to a charge that the standardized tests are not accurate because some quoted examples (anecdotes about particular students) tended to suggest that the tests were not accurate in predicting success or failure. The anecdotal examples may have been about students who did well on the standardized tests but who performed badly in school, or, more likely, about students who did poorly on standardized tests but who performed very well in school.

With that context, the speaker is stating that random teacher's evaluations of random students cannot be as acceptable as standardized testing simply because the teachers are not as objective as an independent evaluation. The speaker also opines that a few examples which appear to favor teacher evaluation are not enough to make a general rule.